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This is Christos with the Becker's Healthcare Podcast.
I'm thrilled today to be joined by Kirsten Probar,
patient care supervisor of lactation program at Children's Minnesota.
We connected with her to discuss the health system's effort to provide mothers
with breast pumps. Kirsten, thank you so much for joining us today.
Thank you for having me. I'm thrilled to be here.
Excellent.
Could you please introduce yourself and tell us about your background?
Yes, absolutely. So I am Kirsten Prova, as Chris said,
I am currently the patient care supervisor of one of our nurseries here at
Children Minnesota, as well as our lactation program.
Prior to my supervisor role,
I worked on our neonatal float team here at Children's for a few years.
I started at Children's as a brand new, new grad rn,
and so this has been my career at Children's.
I am very honored to be an employee here.
Kirsten, as I mentioned,
children's Minnesota has a program to provide mothers with breast pumps.
It's all part of your health equity efforts over at Children's Minnesota,
something that many hospitals health systems speak about and want to get
rolling. Uh,
could you tell me how did the idea to loan breast pumps to mothers involve,
evolve,
and what personal personnel rather and resources have been needed to implement
it?
Absolutely, yes.
Children's has a commitment to our patient families to provide more equitable
care. And so in that we now own 20 portable hospital grade breast
pumps that are available to moms free of charge while their child is here in our
hospital at Children's Minnesota. While in the hospital,
many of our newborns aren't able to breastfeed immediately after delivery,
which leaves their moms dependent on a pump to initiate and ma maintain that
milk supply.
And most breast pumps we realize are designed to support an already existing
milk supply,
but it often takes that hospital grade pump to really successfully start that
milk supply if the newborn is not at the breast.
So our lactation consultants know this and saw a gap where many of our
patient mothers were unable to obtain that hospital grade breast pump and were
therefore struggling to make the milk that they needed to feed their baby.
So they saw that came up with the solution,
and then you asked what personnel and resources.
It was one of these programs that many,
many people around the org touched in order to get it from conception to launch.
Um, our lactation team worked very closely with our compliance team,
our team from legal and finance,
all to really make this program become what it is today. Breast,
a breast pump company will run a rental program from themselves.
Um, and we had looked into doing that, but then really realized,
wouldn't it be cool if we could just run, like,
if we could just purchase these pumps outright and run the program ourselves so
we're not dealing with an outside vendor. So that's,
we pioneered the hospital owning the project, um,
and really having this fleet at our disposal versus going through
an outside party.
Kirsten,
how many people have availed themselves of the program so far and what's the
feedback that been like?
Yes, so we went live on March 1st of this year, and since GoLive,
we have completed 23 loan agreements where the pump was loaned out,
used and returned back to us,
and those 23 pumps supported 29 neonates, which is so exciting.
Um, on an average day,
we would say between 75 to 85% of our 20 pumps are loaned out,
and the feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. Um,
we have had mothers who have unexpectedly delivered early whose pump was not
scheduled to be delivered for a few more weeks.
We've seen mothers who were using a pump that was causing pain with pumping.
Um, we were able to help a mom who is here unexpectedly from out of town who
delivered unexpectedly who did not have access to the pump that she had back
home.
And all of those moms have just been so thankful for the ability to use the pump
and that it's helped with their effective feeding,
which has in turn created a good milk supply for them to give their babies.
Uh, as you said,
it's only been about a couple of months since you've had this program,
but what have you learned about the need to be flexible?
Certainly you touched on that a little bit, but yeah.
What have you learned about what you need to do with this program moving
forward?
Yes, absolutely. Since the program is brand new, um,
we are learning every day with the needs that our moms have and how to meet
them. And so each day that when we come to work and work with these mothers,
we are figuring out the needs that they have and how we can best support them
and make sure that this pump program is helping them first and foremost.
And so if that is bending to, um,
the needs of when and where they need to return the pump or how they need to
pick the pump up, we are just trying to make sure that it is, um,
fair and equitable to all of the mothers who have our pumps. And that really,
at the end of the day, it is benefiting their milk supply,
which in turn is benefiting our patients here at Children's Minnesota.
How do you make sure that everything is fair and equitable with the program?
Yeah, absolutely. We,
I think the biggest thing with learning about being fair and equitable is that
not every situation will look the same because not every mother's situation is
the same. And so really with that health equity,
it's not that every single person that comes in will see these exact same,
you know, step one, step two,
step three because if we're being equitable to them,
we realize those steps may not work for them. And so I think it's,
it's been a learning opportunity for all of us to know we design a program,
you write out every single detail and then you grow along the way.
When you realize to meet these needs,
they might not be returned in the patient's room as we stated on the sheet.
You know,
it might be meeting the mom at their next follow up appointment because she
didn't have a ride to bring it in earlier than that. And so knowing that, hey,
we're gonna meet her where she is at and we're still gonna get the pump back,
and she still had the opportunity to use it,
but it is fair and equitable than to all involved.
That makes sense to me. Certainly.
Were you able to draw from other programs that are similar or as far as you
know, were you starting this all from scratch?
We really started the pump rental program from str, um, scratch,
but we were able to draw from our,
our compliance and legal team really helped us with the outline of the program
with other programs in the org when it just came to generally, you know,
how do you get a program from conception to launch?
They really were able to walk us through step-by-step,
here's what a loan agreement should look like. And so in that regard,
we definitely pulled from many different areas of children's,
but in regards to having a pump loaner program,
we really created it from the ground up here at Children's.
On the subject of healthcare equity.
Do you know of any other programs at Children's Minnesota now that you have the
lactation program off the ground that might be able to follow in its footsteps?
Yes, absolutely. Children's Minnesota.
We remain committed to health equity and looking at this issue from all facets
of care. Um, as the kid experts,
that's what we call ourselves here we are on a mission to champion these health
needs of all of the children and families in our community.
One of another program that we have is our neonatal virtual care,
um, which is a program that provides on demand care
management for newborns that need that immediate and acute stabilization and
resuscitation.
It allows for regional and rural hospitals to
electronically connect with our neonatologists and neonatal nurse practitioners
here at Children's to immediately have that connection to see and hear what is
happening in their delivery rooms and operating rooms to help in
the moment.
And that program launched in 2018 and has had great success and we're really
hoping to continue with that and help grow that program to reach any other
area hospital, be that in Minnesota or Wisconsin,
to provide that equitable care to ensure that all of our neonates are getting
that critical acute life-saving care that they need right at delivery.
Kirsten is certainly important to speak about healthcare equity.
As I mentioned before, it's a subject that needs a spotlight.
How has it become as big as it is within Children's Minnesota?
How has the awareness grown and why is it so important?
Yeah, absolutely. I do think, as you said, it is, uh,
an issue that deserves the brightest spotlight.
I think we are all realizing that we all have areas that we can grow and do
better as we learn about people.
And Children's really puts that as the forefront is as we learn about each
individual patient and family who walks through our doors,
children's makes an effort to meet them where they are and make sure that they
are receiving the best care possible. And so I just think we are,
we're excited to be pioneers in this work.
We're excited to have this be a forefront.
We're excited about the ability to be able to be highlighted here,
to speak about the many efforts and programs that we have that really help us
meet our patient and family where they're at.
Ki thank you so much for your time and insights today.
If we look forward to connecting with you soon.
Thank you so much for having me.